| Over
the past twenty years, sociologist Kai Erickson's
"research errands", as he refers to them,
have taken him to any number of communities still
reeling from the effects of recent disasters. From
the flood ravaged town of Buffalo Creek, to the
Grassy Narrows Indian reservation on the banks of
the mercury-contaminated Wabigoon River, to the
neighborhoods surrounding the Three Mile Island
nuclear plant, his journey is charted in his book,
A New Species of Trouble (1994).
The book is a gripping examination
of the impact of collective trauma which Erikson
defines as a "blow to the basic tissues of
social life that damages the bonds attaching people
together and impairs the prevailing sense of community"
(p. 233). Whether in the form of a natural or human-made
disaster, discrete or on-going social disorder,
or chronic condition, collective trauma is of sociological
interest because it reveals so much about the intricate
interaction between trauma and culture.
As Geertz (1973) points out, culture
may be viewed as a context of symbols and meanings
that people create and recreate for themselves during
the process of social interaction. Culture is represented
externally in artifacts, roles, rituals and institutions,
and internally as values, beliefs, attitudes, identities,
stock of knowledge and world view.
With reference to that definition
of culture, this present article engages in the
kind of research errand that Erickson sets out.
It examines an array of collective traumas around
the world for the insights it provides about the
role that culture plays in just two of what really
are many critical areas: the shaping of the experience
of collective trauma, and the facilitation of recovery
from these unexpected ruptures in social life.
Culture and the Experience
of Collective Trauma
When culture functions well, it
buffers members from at least some of the disruptive
impact and consequences of collective trauma, as
the international research literature attests. Abu
Heim, Quota, Thabet and El Sarraj (1993), for example,
find that a strong commitment to Palestinian cultural
values and world view offers psychological protection
to many of the children in Gaza where armed conflict
with the Israelis is a feature of everyday life.
Swartz and Levett (1989) observe similar buffering
effects of cultural commitment for Black children
living under the repressive regime of apartheid
in South Africa. In their interviews with a small
sample of elderly Armenian survivors of the Turkish
genocide, Kalayjian, Shahinian, Gergerian and Saraydarian
(1996) also find that strong religious belief and
fierce pride in cultural identity mitigate, to some
extent, the otherwise devastating grief and outrage
that survivors experience to this day.
Cultural stories, myths and legends
that have as themes the mastery of past events of
collective trauma also may be used a resource by
members of a culture who are currently experiencing
collective trauma. Uyehara (1980-1981) analyzes
the Horehore-Bushi type of Japanese folksong that
developed among immigrant laborers in Hawaii. Its
themes of the trauma of plantation life and the
longing for homeland are offset by a leitmotif of
persistence in the face of hardship and, ultimately,
independence and success. A source of comfort and
inspiration to the immigrants who composed them,
the songs also serve as a cultural resource for
later Japanese generations coping with other types
of collective trauma.
There is at least one example of
a subculture "borrowing" a collective
traumatic event in order to create its own sustaining
and comforting myth during a time of chronic, even
unrelenting, trauma. In April 1912, the luxury liner
Titanic struck an iceberg on its maiden voyage
and sunk in the north Atlantic, killing 1500 of
its passengers and crew, and challenging the western
world's belief in God and its faith in technology.
Today, more is known about that disaster than ever
before, but the story that the immensely popular
film, the Broadway musical and the plethora of recently
published books do not tell is about the appropriation
of the disaster by African-Americans.
None of the ill-fated ship's passengers
were African-American, nor any of its crew, but
as Weisbord (1994) points out both southern and
northern Blacks, traumatized by virulent racism
and demoralized by persistent poverty, made the
Titanic disaster the subject of a toast,
an oral narrative. In a Harlem version of the toast,
Shine, a dark-skinned Black, worked aboard the luxury
liner as a stoker. As the ship began to sink, and
the wealthy white passengers began to panic and
then die, he used his superior athletic skills to
break down an iron door and swim to safety, ignoring
along the way the captain's wife who offered him
sexual favors for his help, and an elderly millionaire
who offered cash. The toast is not only a narrative
through which contempt for White society is expressed,
but a wholly constructed myth about the triumph
of the race in the face of prejudice, hatred and
temptation.
Other cultural artifacts also serve
that function. During World War II, approximately
120,000 Japanese-Americans were confined in relocation
camps. Caught between the demand to show allegiance
to their country of birth by renouncing their cultural
heritage, and the temptation to embrace their heritage
even while risking expulsion from their country,
many of the detainees felt demoralized, confused
and powerless. But the paintings and sketches of
the camps' artists provided images of dignity and
efficacy and, perhaps most importantly, also celebrated
the richness and the strength of the very dual cultural
identity, that of Japanese-American, that under
conditions of internment had become the source of
so much anxiety and even shame for the detainees
(Kuramitsu, 1995).
When Culture Fails
As deVries (1996) points out, culture
is a "double-edged sword" (p. 400). Because
it acts as a buffer and supportive system, its members
are dependent upon it to give their lives meaning
and direction. Collective trauma, by its very definition,
poses a direct assault on the continuity and integrity
of the cultural system. At times, however, those
disruptions are so unexpected as to have been entirely
unforeseen. Two examples from different parts of
the world about two subtle, yet insidious, disruptions
provide that insight.
In 1986 the Chernobyl nuclear disaster
occurred. The worst in a series of nuclear disasters
throughout the world, the explosions in the Chernobyl
plant released hundreds of tons of radioactive dust
and dispersed it across Europe and Scandinavia.
A million acres of forest were contaminated and
vast tracts of land will remain uninhabitable for
thousands of years. The human toll of "this
new species of trouble," as Erickson (1994,
p. 141) refers to it, is inestimable. To date, over
a half a million people who either were involved
in the clean-up or were living nearby are sick or
dead, and it is estimated that over $50 billion
will be needed to address the future health needs
of the over 4 million people who continue to live
in the most seriously contaminated areas including
the Ukraine where Sappa and Mordovenko (1993) surveyed
students who were 11 to 12 years old at the time
of the nuclear disaster. Although most of the students
agree that the ultimate consequences of the disaster
will take years to assess, 57% express no real concerns
about nuclear accidents and think that existing
nuclear plants should remain open, and 11% feel
that more should be built.
It is tempting, of course, to dismiss
this quite surprising finding as nothing more than
the product of adolescent folly and ignorance, but
Van Den Hout, Havenaar and Meikler-Iljina (1995)
offer a compelling interpretation of Soviet life
from which the impact of collective trauma on the
cultural stock of knowledge may be surmised. Every
culture provides its members with a stock of knowledge
about the way it works and a set of meanings that
makes sense of that work. At times, a collective
traumatic event is so overpowering, so shattering,
that it tests that stock of knowledge and if that
cultural system can offer no real explanation for
the event or its aftermath, the members of the culture
are left epistemically disempowered, that is, they
are at a loss to explain what happened and why,
and to derive any meaning from their own suffering.
Under the political and social conditions of propaganda,
disinformation and lies that followed the Chernobyl
disaster, the already depleted stock of knowledge
could not be replenished because the people's distrust
of government and the official press led them to
reject all information about the disaster--even
factual and life-saving information--as exaggerated
or untrue. From this brief discussion of the sociopolitical
context of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster an alternative
explanation for the surprising responses of the
Ukrainian students begins to emerge: they may be
evidence of the kind of epistemic disempowerment
that at times occurs when a collective trauma tests
a cultural stock of knowledge and finds it wanting.
The Irish potato famine provides
another example of the unexpected disruption to
culture that can occur in the face of collective
trauma. Over the four awful years of "the Great
Hunger," nearly half of the Irish population
either died from famine-related diseases or emigrated
to escape their plight. The personal toll of the
famine was enormous and tragic, of course, but it
is its altogether unexpected impact on the Gaelic
language that is of interest here. Language is the
primary means for communicating culture and for
socializing new generations. As preliterate people,
the Irish poor were devoted to the oral tradition,
using stories, songs and verse to express and transmit
a rich and vigorous traditional culture. But their
language was one of the victims of the famine. A
disproportionate number of those who died or emigrated
were Gaelic-speakers. By the famine's end, only
300,000 monoglot Gaelic-speakers were left in the
country and over successive generations English
spread rapidly as the association between the Gaelic
language and poverty and ignorance was firmly forged
in the collective consciousness (Miller, 1985).
The steady Anglicization of Ireland
over the 150 years after the famine created what
the Irish refer to as "the Great Silence,"
an ever-widening linguistic and cultural gap between
each successive generation. Increasingly cut off
from all that is communicated by native language--tradition,
identity and sense of place--post-famine generations
left their homeland and sought their dreams abroad,
with increasingly profound socioeconomic and political
consequences for their native country.
At times, an entire culture is
compromised by collective trauma, leaving its members
vulnerable to the psychological sequelae so familiar
to experts in traumatic stress. The immediate aftermath
of the Exxon Valdez oil spill provides
that unsettling insight. In March 1989, the Exxon
Valdez poured over a quarter of a million barrels
of crude oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound,
killing innumerable fish, seals, sea birds, otters
and whales and destroying the livelihoods of native
Aleut and non-native fishing communities.
In their study of community residents, Palinkas,
Downs, Patterson and Russell (1993) find that native
Aleuts were over twice as likely to have experienced
PTSD and generalized anxiety disorder than were
the non-natives because the natural resources destroyed
by the oil spill are more than just an economic
commodity to them--they are the crux of Aleut identity,
social organization and ideology, and are the symbols
through which native culture is transmitted to future
generations.
Finally, it is important to consider
another cultural failure, this one so systemic that
it is most descriptively termed cultural disintegration.
As Bosnia, Rwanda, Somalia and other places around
the world tragically reveal, civil wars, ethnic
cleansings, revolutions and mass expulsions and
exoduses disarticulate cultural systems and reduce
them to meaningless customs, pointless rituals and
vague collective memories. As deVries (1996) points
out, the disintegration of culture inevitably gives
rise to fierce nationalism, tribalism and fundamentalism,
all regressive forces that act to "release
individuals behaviorally and ideologically from
an intolerable complexity that cannot be managed
or used in a more productive way" (p. 407).
When culture no longer can provide identity and
meaning, it is these kinds of regressive forces
that rush in to fill the vacuum.
Although much yet needs to be learned
about cultural disintegration and its repercussion
on individuals, deVries (1996) offers some interesting,
albeit disturbing, insights. He suggests that when
culture disintegrates, the individual's problems
will be proportional to it, with the avenues of
personal vulnerability following the routes vacated
by the culture. Thus, "paranoia substitutes
for trust; aggression replaces nurturance and support;
identity confusion or a negative identity substitutes
for a positive identity" (p. 408). While this
hypothesis does not seem to bode well for too many
people around the world today, history also shows
that once the collective traumatic event recedes
or ends completely, people almost always reconstruct
on the remnants of the culture upon which they had
been so dependent.
Culture and the Resolution
of Trauma
Culture not only functions to buffer
its members from the devastating impact of collective
trauma, but it also provides the devices that facilitate
the process of healing. One such device is ritual.
The interest of sociologists and anthropologists
in the function and structure of ritual is well
detailed in their respective literatures which describe
ritual as a process that shapes the expression of
emotion, guides behavior, and offers meaning and
closure even while it strengthens the link of the
individual to the social group and to the culture
at large (Durkheim, 1961; Turner, 1967). For traumatized
individuals whose emotions may be labile and behavior
immoderate, who have an existential need for meaning
and sense, and whose bonds with others and with
the culture may have been torn, ritual can play
an integral role in healing.
Research on racial minority veterans
of the Vietnam War provide that insight. Parson
(1985) was one of the first to call attention to
the "tripartic adaptational dilemma" of
minority veterans who must come to terms with their
bicultural identity, confront institutional racism,
and work through the traumatic echoes of the war.
For African-American veterans he advocates the use
of "post-traumatic psychocultural therapy"
(PTpsyCT) that focuses on each prong of this adaptational
dilemma and even historicizes institutional racism
by addressing the experience and legacy of slavery.
For American Indian veterans, participation
in cultural rituals provides a helpful adjunct to
more traditional psychotherapy. One such Navajo
ritual, the Enemy Way, lasts for seven days and
involves family, clan and community members in a
ceremony that restores harmony, balance and connection
to the traumatized Navajo veteran. As Manson et
al. (1990) explain, the greatest relevance of such
culturally specific healing practices lies in their
meaning-making function--they make sense of the
traumatic event and the individual's responses to
it through the use of familiar cultural symbols
and activities, and by reference to the cultural
belief system and world view.
An insight into the psychological
consequences of the failure to enact cultural rituals
during and after a collective traumatic event is
provided by research on refugee groups. Here, the
concept of "cultural bereavement" is important
to appreciate. Eisenbruch (1991), who coined the
term, describes cultural bereavement as the experience
of the uprooted person or group resulting from loss
of social structures, cultural values and self-identity
(p. 674). His own work with Cambodian refugees shows
that those who sought refuge in the United States
tend to have more persistent post-traumatic symptomatology
than those who fled to Australia where there is
less pressure to conform and assimilate, and more
tolerance for the performance of cultural rituals
that serve to heal the psychic wounds of civil war
and geographic displacement.
Cultural bereavement is observed
in other refugee groups as well. Harrell-Bond and
Wilson (1990) find that many who fled the civil
war in Mozambique are unable to work through the
trauma of displacement because they continue to
feel haunted by the spirits of dead relatives for
whom they had not been able to carry out culturally
prescribed burial rituals. For the Beta Israel,
as Ethiopian Jews prefer to be called, rituals associated
with the land are at the heart of their culture.
Their recent emigration to Israel deprived them
of land ownership and thus rendered meaningless
the rituals that engender their social cohesion
and reaffirm their cultural identity. Schindler
(1993) notes the attenuated grief and mourning of
the Beta Israel emigres even several years after
their dramatic air lift into Israel, and attributes
it to the loss of these unifying and identifying
rituals.
It is also important to consider
the plight of those who, because of the marginalizing
effects of prejudice, itself a chronic collective
trauma, are routinely and systematically denied
access to and participation in the restorative rituals,
roles and practices of the larger White culture.
Penck and Allen (1991), for example, find a higher
and more persistent rate of PTSD among African-American
Vietnam War veterans which they attribute, in large
part, to the marginalizing effects of chronic racism.
Loo (1994) finds the same for Asian-American veterans
and theorizes that their marginalization upon return
to the United States systematically excludes them
from the cultural rituals and roles that will aid
in their healing. War is not the only collective
trauma that reveals this insight. In their study
of the survivors of the savage Buffalo Creek flood,
Green, Lindy, Grace and Glessner (1990) conclude
that the one of the variables that explains the
late onset of PTSD in African-American survivors
is the resurfacing of "the usual prejudicial
attitudes" (p. 57) that work to keep them from
full participation in the restorative rituals and
roles that a decade after the flood had served White
survivors quite well.
Trauma and the Recreation
of Culture
The tendency for collective trauma
to act as a "centrifugal force," as Erickson
(1994, p. 232) calls it, that is to push already
socially marginalized groups ever further away from
the cultural center, is quite well documented in
the literature that is sensitive to its possibility.
It would be remiss, however, not to mention its
"centripetal force." Collective trauma
also can bring people together in the kind of social
interaction that Geertz (1973) says functions to
recreate culture. Two examples, both focusing on
another interaction between culture and trauma-commemoration--will
bring this review article to a close.
The AIDS epidemic is a collective
trauma, as Erickson defines it, and to date has
taken more lives than were lost fighting the war
in Vietnam. The patchwork quilt that commemorates
in individual three by six foot panels just a fraction
of those who died increases in size with the losses
from the epidemic; now so large, it barely can be
experienced all at once. But when it is, culture
is recreated. Rituals have emerged from the showings
of this cultural artifact (Hawkins, 1993). The wearing
of white clothing by those who first unfolded the
panels for display over a decade ago, a purely functional
choice so as to distinguish them from the viewers,
now is a tradition invested with symbolic significance.
The process of folding and unfolding the panels,
the reading of the names, the singing of the hymn
"Amazing Grace," and the candlelight procession
of viewers representing the spectrum of religion,
race, economic class and sexual orientation, but
brought together by loss, are testimony to the centripetal
force of collective trauma.
In the wake of the bombing of the
Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, the centripetal
force of collective trauma also is observed. The
sheer horror of the event, the violence of the deaths
of ordinary people performing routine, everyday
functions, carry a message "that death can
occur arbitrarily and unfairly. . .and suggests
severe limits to our cultural promise of safety
and control" (Haney, Leimer & Lowery, 1997,
p. 169). In the face of this type of devastating
event, the emotional response of even those not
directly affected is so overwhelming, and the cultural
stock of knowledge so inadequate to explain and
offer meaning, that traditional cultural death rituals
lose their usefulness and can feel empty and meaningless.
One response to their inadequacy
is the creation of what Haney, Leimer and Lowery
(1994, p. 161) refer to as "spontaneous memorials,"
that is, the collection of mementos, usually of
a symbolic nature, that people bring to and leave
at the site of the collective traumatic event. The
wire mesh fence surrounding the area where the Murrah
Federal Building once stood is covered with flowers,
hand-made signs, toys, letters and poems, and other
mementos, and even now, three years after the event,
is still a site of pilgrimage. But it is also the
site of the recreation of culture. The spontaneous
memorial represents people's efforts to create a
new, meaningful and public ritual that acknowledges
the grief and fear of the larger community, lifts
constraints on the duration of mourning and the
expression of emotion, and offers the role of mourner
to anyone who participates.
Conclusion
This article examined collective
traumas around the world for the insights they provide
about the role that culture plays in shaping the
experience of collective trauma, and in facilitating
recovery from these unexpected ruptures in social
life. Since it was Erickson's work that inspired
this "research errand," it is his conclusion
that can be cited to best summarize the insights
this paper has uncovered: "The experience of
trauma, at its worst, can mean not only a loss of
confidence in the self but a loss of confidence
in the scaffolding of family and community, in the
structures of human government, in the larger logics
by which humankind lives, and in the ways of nature
itself" (p. 242).
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©1998 by The
American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress,
Inc. |
